WORK AS A VITAL PART OF PATRIOTISM
Gurowski asked, "Where is the bog? I wish to earn money. I wish to dig peat." "Oh, no, sir, you cannot do such degrading work." "I cannot be degraded. I am Gurowski."—Emerson's Journals.
Gurowski asked, "Where is the bog? I wish to earn money. I wish to dig peat." "Oh, no, sir, you cannot do such degrading work." "I cannot be degraded. I am Gurowski."—Emerson's Journals.
SOMETHING has been said of the estimation in which work and working for a living, are held in our country.
In an illuminating sermon, Dr. Lyman Abbott once treated of this subject. It was on the Fourth of July, and he beganby saying that the most important result of the Civil War, as he viewed it, was one that he had never heard mentioned. Having thus enlisted the keenest attention of his hearers, he continued in nearly these words:
"Before the Civil War, the man who worked with his hands was despised by the leading element in the South. Supplied with an army of slaves to wait upon him, the average planter was spared the necessity of exertion. He hunted in the season, raced sometimes and sometimes played an athletic game; but he held the theory, broadly speaking, that no man could be a gentleman (as most foreigners believe also) who engages in trade or pursues any mechanical occupation.
"The war changed all that. Many ofthe richest planters had to go to work. Some of them had even to enter menial servitude in order to earn bread for their families. Then they found out that it was possible to preserve their scholarship, their refinement and their gentle manners, though they worked hard every day. It was an epochal discovery.
"From that time, the dignity of labor was established in the South, as the Pilgrim Fathers had long before established it in New England, and as it must eventually be established throughout the world, if the world is ever to rise to the full glory of the democratic ideal."
The chief, and almost the only argument of the advocates of Child Labor in our fields and factories, is that the children thus become early used to work,—ahabit which is productive of the best results in later life.
Carlyle's great essays upon work have inspired thousands; and in Professor Carl Hilty's wonderful volume called "Happiness," there is an essay on "Work," which every parent should read. He shows how laziness,—the inherent aversion to work,—has been a chief obstacle to progress in all ages; how hard labor was so universally relegated to slaves during early times that even to philosophers like Plato and Aristotle, any social system was unthinkable, which did not include a slave class.
One of Professor's Hilty's incidental remarks is worth mentioning. He speaks of the many excellent women who observe scrupulously the injunction in theFourth Commandment to keep the Sabbath Day holy; but who seem to fail to observe the opening sentence of the commandment, "Six days shalt thou labor"; often apparently thinking that one day out of the seven, or even none at all, is enough for that purpose. He feels that the progress of the world depends upon the combined and strenuous labor of every living man and woman for six days out of the seven,—with only occasional vacations!
We are all probably agreed that every citizen should know how to support himself.
One of our truant officers went to a poor home to find out why a boy who lived there had been absent from school for several days. The mother reportedthat the father was in the hospital, and that her only support was the small pay which this boy received for holding horses, doing errands for the corner grocer, and so on.
The teapot stood on the stove, and the officer said, "But your boy will grow up ignorant if you keep him out of school like this. Don't you want him to know about tea,—where it grows and how it is prepared for the market?"
"Oh," responded the poor woman, with a practical common sense which disconcerted her hearer, "I'd a dale rather he should know how to airn a pound of it."
And in her desperate circumstances, it was far more necessary that he should.
But in well-to-do households, where there is not much work that a child cando, especially in the city, how can he be trained up in habits of industry?
This is a problem which, as we have said, confronts thousands of conscientious mothers, who believe profoundly in Mrs. Browning's pregnant lines:
"Get work! Get work! Be sureThat it is better than anything you work to get."
Country children can gather the eggs, cut feed for the animals, often have a pet lamb, chickens, heifers or colts of their own to care for. There is little difficulty in finding "chores" for them to do. But the city boy and girl are not so fortunately situated.
All that can be done for them is to devise errands, and to place upon them as much responsibility for small duties aboutthe house, as you think they can bear. They should spend as much time as possible in the open air, playing in their own yard or, under close watch, in the street,—the playground of most city children.
Every means that can be thought of should be used to make them despise the idea of idleness, and to love work.
A distinguished professor in one of our great universities taught his classes that work was one of the cardinal evils, and that a prime endeavor of life should be to get along with as little work as possible.
A mother of one of his pupils, who had brought her son up to believe that work was noble and honorable, and that it ranked with the four gospels as a meansof salvation from sin, has never forgiven that professor. He overturned in the mind of her son the ideal of the glory of work, which she had so painstakingly erected there, and it has never been fully re-established. No such man as that teacher should ever be given a position upon a college faculty.
When one reads of the childhood of the vast majority of our distinguished men it seems chimerical to hope that children brought up in comfort, with plenty to eat and to wear, should ever attain to high positions. Most of our great men appear to have struggled through seas of adversity, in order to get an education and a foothold in the world of literature or art or politics or finance. We recognize that it was the self-reliance and thecapacity for hard work thus developed, which brought them success. We know that it is a truism that poverty is the mother of muscle and of invention. Many wealthy parents have tried to supply this great motive by depriving their children of luxuries, and making them work their way through college, or "begin at the bottom" of some business. This has sometimes, but not often, resulted well; for, after all, artificial poverty is only a blind, and the child has ever the underlying consciousness that it is, and that there is no real need that he should much exert himself.
A lady who conducted a subscription class of society women in their own beautiful parlors, testified that their mental inertia was lamentable, and that the onlytwo in her class of fifty, who really seemed to have any capacity for keen thought, were women who worked for a living. They had to make their minds nimble and bright in order to keep themselves afloat.
In Professor Drummond's remarkable book, "Natural Law in the Spiritual World," there is a striking illustration of the deteriorating effect of disuse upon organs, in the highly organized crab, which, when it finds a rich feeding-ground, attaches itself to some convenient rock, loses one by one its feelers and tentacles and soon becomes a simple sac, fit only to suck up nourishment.
Many of the absurd opinions and nearly all of the sins of the so-called "society" people can be laid to idleness.The mind, seldom used to its capacity, becomes dull and unable to reason, and the moral nature loses its strength of conviction. Nothing is worse for our country than the increase of our idle classes. Its salvation is the slogan that every man and woman should work and earn at least a living.
Our "leisure women" are realizing their plight, and most of them are entering actively into our great philanthropic and civic organizations. The war has given them a splendid opportunity and it is a good sign for our nation that so many of them have seized it. The idle woman, whom George Meredith calls, "that baggage which has so hindered the march of civilization," is coming to realize her responsibility as a citizen of a great democraticnation. The leisure man among us is so rare that he is an almost negligible quantity, for which we may well be thankful. If we can get the child of America started well in the ways of industry, the man is safe; for one who has experienced the transporting pleasure of achievement, can scarcely help wanting more of it.
"The phrase, 'economy of effort,' so dear to Froebel's followers, had little meaning for Dr. William James," says Agnes Repplier. "He asserts that effort is oxygen to the lungs of youth, and that a noble, generous rivalry is the spur of action and the impelling force of civilization."
It is certainly the "cue" of every patriot who loves his country.
The joy of work is well described by Cleveland Moffett in the article which has been mentioned. He says: "However disagreeable work may be, life without work is even more disagreeable. All who have tried it, no matter how rich they are, agree that enforced idleness ranks among the most cruel of tortures. Men easily die of it, as doctors know, who every day order broken-down neurasthenics in their middle fifties, back into the business or professional harness they have foolishly retired from."
The field of work for those women who are obliged or prefer to support themselves, is broadening hopefully. President Woolley of Mount Holyoke tells of seven of her recent graduates who took part lately in a symposium at the college,all of whom were engaged in paying work, but no one of whom was teaching, though that has hitherto been the main dependence of the wage-earning girl.
One of these young women was a physician; the others were respectively: a lawyer; an interior decorator; an editor of the children's department of a well-known periodical; a county agent in New York State; a member of the staff of the Children's Bureau at Washington; and the Secretary of the American Nurses' Association.
Such incidents make us confident that the varied talents of our bright girls will soon find as wide a scope as that enjoyed by our boys.
And it cannot be too strongly emphasized that regular daily work in earlylife is invaluable in establishing habits of industry.
A common expression used to be: "He has good habits," or "He has bad habits." We do not hear it so often nowadays, but the words are full of meaning. As a man's habits are, so is he.
"Could the young but realize," says Mr. Moffett, "how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state."
It is then that we mothers must mold them into the workers that we want them to be, and we must use the patriotic motive to quicken their love of industry. In certain states this motive is strengthened by laws compelling idle men to work.
Robert Gair is the founder of what is now the greatest "paper-products" business in this country, and probably in the world. It is located in the Borough of Brooklyn, New York City. There Mr. Gair, on the occasion of his seventy-fifth birthday, made an address to his employees, a portion of which, as reported in theBrooklyn Eagle, was as follows:
"No permanent achievement, whatever its form may be, appears to be possible without stress of labor. Nothing has come to me without persistent effort of the head and of the hand. Hard labor will win what we want, if the laws of nature are obeyed. Self-coddling and the fear of living strenuously, enfeeble character and result in half-successes. Hardlabor has no penalties. It is the loss of hardihood through careless living that brings penalties. Do the one thing before you with your whole heart and soul. Do not worry about what has gone by, nor what lies ahead, but rivet your mind and energies on the thing to be done now. Self-indulgence and late hours produce leaden hands and a listless brain, robbing your work of 'punch.'"
Mr. Gair cast his first vote for Abraham Lincoln. He enlisted early in the Civil War and saw hard service. Less than two hundred of the original 1,087 of his regiment remained to be mustered out at the close of the war.
Surely his wise and uncompromising words indicate one of the most necessary ways in which our young people, who desireto show how much they love their country and wish to promote her glory, can contribute to it.
A PATRIOT'S MANNERS AND MORALS
Manners are the happy way of doing things. . . . Give a boy address and accomplishments, and you give him the mastery of palaces and fortunes. . . . The moral equalizes all; enriches, empowers all.—Emerson.
Manners are the happy way of doing things. . . . Give a boy address and accomplishments, and you give him the mastery of palaces and fortunes. . . . The moral equalizes all; enriches, empowers all.—Emerson.
A THOUGHTFUL writer upon American customs recently remarked, "The morals of America are better than those of any other nation, but their manners are the worst."
A certain mother once said, "I was always so fearful that my children would become bad men and women that I devotedall my attention to making them good. Then I was shocked to find, when they had grown up, that though their morals were satisfactory their manners were not."
Perhaps most American mothers are like her. And that may be the reason why we have the reputation of being the worst-mannered of all the so-called "civilized" peoples.
Still, the outlook is encouraging. Observing critics have been heard to say that the children now growing up, in spite of many exceptions, have better manners than those who have preceded them. The public schools are more careful regarding such matters than they used to be, and so are parents. In fact, if it were not for our numerous importationsfrom the countries which most severely criticize us, our American manners, on the whole, might be called pretty good.
Have you not noticed how many laboring men remove their hats when apologizing to you, or offering a seat in a street-car? Or say, "Excuse me?" when it is proper. Instead of staring at a cripple or a deformed person, as people used almost invariably to do, in very many cases lately it has been remarked that eyes have been politely turned away and an effort apparently made to appear unconscious of the misfortune. Parents are teaching their children to eat more gracefully. More hands are neatly manicured. In fact, perhaps we are going almost too far in this direction. In one of the "CountryContributor's" interesting articles in theLadies' Home Journal, she says, "Don't let anybody tell you that a lady or gentleman must have nice hands. It isn't true." She means, of course, that useful work, which often spoils the beauty of the hands, must be considered far more important than the keeping of them immaculate.
Quarrelsome and ill-bred children are still to be found among us, even in pretty good families; but in spite of the large class always present, who are chronic complainers of the decadence of the times,—a sure sign of approaching senility,—it must be acknowledged that the manners of the children one meets nowadays are better than those of the last generation.
It would be a confession of the impotence of effort if this were not so. Thousands of women's clubs and scores of women's periodicals have been hammering at "the bringing up of children," for, lo, these many years. Add to these, the thunderings of the pulpit and of the lecture-platform, and we must admit that the best ways that we know of imparting information and inspiration are useless, unless there has been within the last quarter-century an improvement in the behavior of our children. We must remember that civilization is a slow process, and one cannot readily believe that, even in the millennium, there will not be some silly mothers and some naughty children.
It is said that we behave better, so far as outward signs go, when we wear ourbest clothes. Without fostering the love of dress, which is likely to be fully developed without help, especially among our girls, it cannot be too strongly impressed upon our children that they must never appear before others without being neatly and properly dressed. A principal of a famous Normal School used to instruct his students that they must always dress as well as they could afford.
"It will have a good effect upon your pupils," he said, "and it will help to establish the dignity of your profession."
One of the few compliments which foreign visitors generally paid us (before the war) was that we were a well-dressed people.
Perhaps this has had more effect upon their estimation of us as a nation thanhave some of our more solid virtues. Perhaps it is really a sign of the possession of solid virtues.
But, again, it is example which counts more than precept in the case of manners, as in everything else. If you wish your children to treat your wife with respect, you must treat her so yourself. If you rise when she enters the room; if you hasten to place a footstool for her; if you apologize for passing in front of her; if you hasten to help her up and down the rough places; then your children will do it. Otherwise, all of her and your injunctions will have small influence. There are good citizens and good soldiers who are uncouth and awkward in their manners, but a graceful courtesy clothing the more substantial qualities will givethem far more weight in the community.
One impatient boy complained to his fastidious mother, who was bound to make him a gentleman in manners, no matter what else he might become, "Oh, mother, it is nothing but 'Thank you,' and 'I beg your pardon,' and jumping up to give people your seat, from morning to night—and I get so sick of it! When I grow up, I'm never going to say them or do them any more!"
Courtly and polished manners are said to be impossible among the mass of the people in a republic. Let us try to show the world that this is false. Distinction of manner is not one of the great qualities of a nation, but if we wish to impress upon a somewhat incredulous world the glory and beauty of our institutions, weshall find the cultivation of beautiful manners a great help.
Dr. Lyman Beecher once said, "What a pity that so many of our finest and most self-sacrificing Christians have had rough manners! They have robbed their example of half its force."
The current ambition that our nation should be courteous as well as brave, is shown plainly in the questions which come by the hundred to the "household departments" of our periodicals, especially from mothers and young people. Points of good behavior and etiquette are expounded there so fully and so often that there would seem to be no excuse for any ignorance among us of the proper conduct in any situation.
The printed answers to these questionsdo not always commend themselves to the judgment of the judicious; but, on the whole, they are satisfactory, especially when we consider that opinions of just what constitutes a lady or a gentleman have differed even among the best authorities.
Thus, the old English social doctrine was that a gentleman is born, not made, and that no amount of training could graft the gentleman on one of humble lineage.
Our own Admiral Sampson used to say that "certain specific advantages of training and education were needed to make a gentleman,"—implying that gentlemanliness is an acquired art; and so the famous, but profoundly immoral Chesterfield, would have defined it,though he considered good blood essential also.
Steele, in the "Tatler," observed that the appellation of "gentleman" is never to be affixed to a man's circumstances, but to his behavior in them. Old Chaucer puts the matter thus: "He is gentil that doth gentil dedes."
The outside likeness to a gentleman or lady amounts to little, unless there is a kind heart behind it, for affectation and insincerity are in themselves bad manners. Huxley expressed it well when he said: "Thoughtfulness for others, generosity, modesty and self-respect are the qualities which make a real gentleman or lady, as distinguished from the veneered article which commonly goes by that name."
Thackeray gives the best definition of all, though his own manners were harshly criticized by some of his contemporaries. It was, "to be a gentleman is to be brave, to be honest, to be gentle, to be generous, to be wise, and, possessing all these qualities, to exercise them in the most graceful manner."
There are laws which forbid us to teach in our schools any particular religion, but there are no laws, as has already been said in this book, against the teaching of morals. Let us quote again Horace Mann's strong words: "Morals should be systematically taught in our schools, and not left for merely casual and occasional mention."
Few text-books in morals are as yet supplied in our public schools, and littletime is provided in the daily schedules for lectures upon them; but one great avenue to their understanding and attainment is still open. In many schools there is a story-telling hour at intervals, and, as Miss McCracken and her co-laborers have proved, patriotism and every other virtue can be deeply impressed upon the youthful mind by stories.
For instance, one of the most necessary qualities for the development of a strong and noble personality is courage. Now courage is not merely not being afraid, as Miss McCracken shows, and as many of the anecdotes of the present war prove. It is going ahead and doing your duty, even when you are afraid,—as almost every human being is, when exposed to danger. Every one must have noticed,in reading the innumerable war-stories in our books and periodicals, how many times the soldier confesses, "My whole frame trembled and my heart was like water, but I kept right on,"—and in several such cases we are told that some deed of extraordinary bravery was done by the faltering but determined man, which earned for him some medal or cross of merit.
To go forward, no matter how the body may rebel, is the great test of courage. This advice is especially needed by our girls. Upon women and girls have fallen many of the men's tasks in these days, and great moral and physical courage is needed to meet them. Among the other inspiring words of Robert Gair are some to fit these new circumstances.
"Most of you have more quality than you know," he said. "Do not fear to put your ability to the test."
Governor Whitman of New York, in a recent address at Mount Holyoke College, quoted these beautiful words of Phillips Brooks, "Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks."
Our great task is to preserve this nation and its splendid ideals, so sacredly handed down to us by martyr-heroes. Our children must be taught that the task is great, whether peace or war befall us, but that God can impart the wisdom and courage to perform it, and hand it down unimpaired to their descendants.
Frederick the Great was brought up tobe courageous, but his was chiefly the courage of battle.
"Frederick the Great," said Mr. James W. Gerard, our late Ambassador to Germany, in a recent address, "is the hero and model of Germany. His example, coupled with the teaching of Germany's leading philosophers, has built up that ideal of force and dominion which has been the undoing of that great nation. This ideal must be entirely demolished before they can ever resume that place in the brotherhood of nations, to which their gifts and attainments entitle them."
As a model, Frederick the Great is repugnant to the soul of America. We may not all be Christians, but the claim that we are a Christian nation is justified by the fact that our ideals are the idealsof Christianity,—of justice toward all, of the love of mercy, of equality of opportunity for all, and of fraternity among men, of all races and creeds. Peace is one of the grandest things on earth; but, as Dean Howard Robbins reminds us, it is only a means to an end,—namely, this end: the coming of the kingdom of God. If war is required for this end, then we must for a time sacrifice peace.
THE PATRIOT'S RELIGION AND IDEALS
Who seeks and loves the company of greatIdeals, and moves among them, soon or lateWill learn their ways and language, unawareTake on their likeness.—President Samuel V. Cole.
THE Venerable Bede wrote of a king of Northumberland and his counselors as debating whether the emissaries of Pope Gregory should be allowed to present to their people the Christian faith. A gray-haired Chief told of a little bird, which on a stormy night flew into hiswarm, bright dining-hall. It was a sweet moment for the bird, but his surroundings were unnatural. He was frightened, and presently out he flew into the storm again.
"He came out of the dark, and into the dark he returned," said the old Chief. "Thus it is with human life. We come we know not whence. We depart we know not whither. If anybody can tell us anything about it, in God's name, let us hear him."
And thus came the missionaries into Britain and made it a so-called religious nation.
Our religious journals have discussed from many standpoints the possibility of making our own a religious nation. A formally "established" religion is especiallyforbidden us. We all admit this to be wise, and that Church and State should be separate. Yet there are few thoughtful people who do not realize that each individual has his spiritual part, which must be fed and nourished, and that this cannot be done by culture alone. When a series of sex-films was on display in New York, and good people were wondering whether more of good than bad would result to the young who flocked to see them, one distinguished man said to another, "Knowledge alone will never make men virtuous,"—and no truer word was ever spoken, as the spectacle of highly educated Germany amply proves.
We are told that there are other forces than the love of God and the desire to serve Him, which may elevate and redeemmankind. That old Gospel, we are told, is outgrown. By other means, character, the banishment of injustice and crime and the establishment of universal brotherhood can be just as well secured.
First, Science was to do it. "From Huxley's 'Lay Sermons' of 1870," says theChristian Work, "to the latest fulmination of Professor Haeckel, we have been hearing that Science was the true Messiah, the eliminator of all evil." Science was to be taught to our children in the place of the outworn fables of the Bible.
Then came the prophets of Education. Herbert Spencer and his followers informed us that education was the panacea for all ills. Educate the people asto what is best and they will choose the best.
The prophets of Culture came next. All that was necessary to bring in the millennium was the diffusion of art, literature, music, philosophy. The mastery of the world by supermen was to be the religion that should create a strong and virtuous nation. Not meek men, not suffering Christs, but giant men, by force summoning perfect character and perfect efficiency out of erring humanity.
Economic Reform was the idol of the next decade or two. If we could get an eight-hour day, one day's rest in seven, a good wage, plenty to eat and model tenements, then religion, as the Church views it, would be superfluous.
During the last forty or fifty years, allof these gospels have been given a fair trial. "Science," says Dr. Frederick Lynch, "has driven the classics out of our colleges, and has almost become the text-book of our Sunday Schools,"—and yet it has worked little improvement in our national morals, and is just now devoted chiefly to the inventing of machines and chemicals for the slaughter of mankind. Even airships have apparently been used mostly for dropping bombs on playgrounds and nurseries. Education was never more general. Education has stood next to the army in the consideration of Germany. Many of our principal cheap politicians and grafters are educated men.
Culture, too, is almost universal. Every town has its library and its women's clubs; and Chautauquas in summerand courses of lectures and concerts in winter, are provided in our smallest villages. Germany has boasted of her culture, and we are proud of ours,—but it seems to have done little more than "to veneer the barbarian" in them and in us.
All of the high-sounding promises of Economic Reform have failed as utterly. Germany's fine insurance plans, England's old-age pensions, the higher wages, shorter hours and better homes of the working people, have proven but vanity. "Be happy and you will be good" is not the great slogan of redemption, after all.
Sects are vanishing, and that is well. But the great ideals of the Bible, the great Pattern of the life of Jesus Christ, these are and ever must be the inspirationof the passion for righteousness which we long to instill into our children. Science, Education, Culture, Economic Reform—these are good and necessary things,—but they are, each and all, only parts of the greater Gospel, and that is what we must teach our children, if we are to make them good citizens; for, as a community without a church goes to pieces, so does character without religion.
Familiarity with the Bible is one of the essentials to this teaching. Besides its ethical and spiritual power, its stories, its poetry and its great essays furnish so much literary culture that a man thoroughly conversant with them is essentially a cultured being.
One of our distinguished statesmen wandered into a backwoods church,where he heard a well-expressed, logical and highly spiritual discourse from a man who bore every mark in his outward appearance of having always lived in the locality. Upon inquiring where this remarkable preacher gained his knowledge, he found that he had always lived in an obscure hamlet and that his library consisted simply of his Bible and his hymn-book.
Abraham Lincoln obtained his wonderful literary style largely from his study of the King James Bible. Webster recommended it as a model of condensed, dignified and vivid expression. Thousands of our best writers and orators are indebted to it for the high quality of their style, and many have so testified.
The work of these writers, such asShakespeare, Browning, Mrs. Browning, Tennyson, Matthew Arnold, Lowell, Longfellow, Bryant, Whittier, Sidney Lanier, are full of allusions and figures which cannot be understood by our young people unless they are familiar with the Bible. All of our greatest modern literature is permeated with its language and its spirit. Every child should know its stories, should be made to learn some of its grand poetry, and should have its ethics and its spiritual lessons deeply graven upon their hearts. We can truly say of it:
"Thou art the Voice to kingly boysTo lift them through the fight."
"The child," says President Butler of Columbia University, "is entitled to hisreligious as well as to his scientific, literary and æsthetic inheritance. Without any one of them he cannot become a truly cultivated man. . . . If it is true that reason and spirit rule the universe, then the highest and most enduring knowledge is of the things of the spirit. That subtle sense of the beautiful and sublime which accompanies spiritual insight and is a part of it,—this is the highest achievement of which humanity is capable. It is typified in the verse of Dante, in the prose of Thomas à Kempis, in the Sistine Madonna of Raphael and in Mozart's Requiem. To develop this sense in education is the task of art and literature; to interpret it is the work of philosophy; to nourish it is the function of religion. It is man's highest possession, and thosestudies which most directly appeal to it are beyond compare most valuable."
Theodore Roosevelt has recently given us a fair definition of religion. The New York Bible Society asked him to write a special message to be printed in the copies of the New Testament designed for soldiers and sailors. He sent the following:
"The teachings of the New Testament are foreshadowed in Micah's verse: 'What more doth the Lord require of thee than to do justice and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?'
"Do justice: and therefore fight valiantly against the armies of Germany and Turkey, for these nations in this crisis stand for the reign of Moloch and Beelzebub upon this earth.
"Love mercy; treat prisoners well; succor the wounded; treat every woman as if she were your sister; care for little children; be tender with the old and helpless.
"Walk humbly; you will do so if you study the life and teachings of the Savior.
"May the God of Justice and mercy have you in His keeping!"
Mr. Roosevelt had evidently in mind the great prayer of George Washington for America, well-known to most Episcopalians, but not so familiar to members of other sects. In fact, it is rather shameful that so few know it. Here it is:
"Almighty God, we make our earnest prayer that thou wilt keep the UnitedStates in thy holy protection; that thou wilt incline the hearts of the citizens to cultivate a spirit of subordination and obedience to government; to entertain a brotherly affection and love for one another and for their fellow citizens of the United States at large. And, finally, that thou wilt most graciously be pleased to dispose us all to do justice, to love mercy, and to demean ourselves with that charity, humility and pacific temper of mind, which were the characteristics of the Divine Author of our blessed religion, and without an humble imitation of whose example in these things we can never hope to be a happy nation. Grant our supplication, we beseech thee, through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen."
This prayer may well be taught toevery one of our boys and girls, and be used by them in their daily devotions.
The Sunday School should be a nesting-place for patriotism as well as for religion. It is occasionally felt by some among us, some even who are truly religious, that the Sunday School accomplishes little good. Powerful evidence to the contrary, in spite of its negative form, was afforded by Judge Fawcett of Brooklyn, when he testified that of the twenty-seven hundred men and women brought before his court during the last five years, not one had ever seen the inside of a Sunday School. The Sunday School has never been developed to its right capacity. It can be made a tremendous engine for the manufacture of religious men and women, and enthusiastic patriots.
For that is what we greatly need in this country,—enthusiastic patriots. Dr. Jowett dwells especially upon the value of enthusiasm.
"No virtue is safe," he says, "until it becomes enthusiastic. It is safe only when it becomes the home of fire. In the high realms of the spirit, it is only the passionate that is secure. The seraphim, those pure spirits who are in the immediate service of the Lord, are the 'burning ones,' and it is their noble privilege to carry fire from off the altar and touch with purifying flame the lips of the unclean."
Nothing will more certainly enkindle this life-giving flame than the study of the lives of great heroes,—first, those of sacred writ, the patriarchs, prophets andapostles, of whom the world was not worthy; then the noble army of the martyrs and the brave men of the great Middle Age; then John Wesley, John Fox, Roger Williams, Whitefield, John Knox, John Huss, John Calvin,—how ignorant our children are of the thrilling heroisms of the past!
Agnes Repplier, in one of her brilliant essays, illustrates this disgraceful fact with this anecdote:
"American children go to school six, eight or ten years, and emerge with a misunderstanding of their own country and a comprehensive ignorance of all others. They say, 'I don't know any history,' as casually as they might say, 'I don't know any chemistry.' A smiling young freshman told me recently that she had beenconditioned because she knew nothing about the Reformation.
"'You mean—' I began questioningly.
"'I mean just what I say,' she interrupted. 'I didn't know what it was or where it was, or who had anything to do with it.'
"I said I didn't wonder she had come to grief. The Reformation was something of an episode. When I was a schoolgirl, I was never done studying about the Reformation. . . . We cannot leave John Wesley any more than we can leave Marlborough or Pitt out of the canvas. . . . History is philosophy teaching by example, and we are wise to admit the old historians into our counsel."
Walter Savage Landor devoted one ofhis most eloquent paragraphs to this subject: "Show me how great projects were executed, great advantages gained and great calamities averted. Show me the generals and the statesmen who stood foremost that I may honor them. Tell me their names that I may repeat them to my children. Show me whence laws were introduced, upon what foundation laid, by what custody guarded, in what inner keep preserved. Place History on her rightful throne."
It is true that most of the great forward steps of civilization have been made by war. Our brave soldiers of 1776, of 1812, of 1847, of 1861, and of 1898, are rightly our most revered heroes. Our children should know the stories of their lives.
But the heroes of duty should be even more emphatically impressed upon their minds. It is true that warriors are soldiers of conscience no less than others, but our children will, we hope, need chiefly the heroism of civil life, which, being less showy, requires more of resolution. Here is a tale of a soldier who kept his courage in another place than the battlefield:
Colonel Higginson was once asked what was the bravest deed that he ever saw done in the Civil War. He replied that the bravest deed he ever witnessed was not done in battle. It was at a banquet, where several officers had related salacious stories, and the turn came of a young lieutenant. He rose and said, "I cannot tell a story, but I will give you atoast, to be drunk in water,—Our Mothers."
There was a hush of guilty silence, and soon the party broke up.
May our sons never be placed in similar circumstances, but if they are, may they show a similar bravery!
It may be remembered that a story almost identical with this was told of General Grant.
The lives of Livingston, of Stanley, of Paton, of Elizabeth Fry, of Florence Nightingale, of Julia Ward Howe, of Alice Freeman Palmer, of Anna H. Shaw,—of Wilberforce, of Judson, and of men like the late Joseph H. Choate should be made familiar to our young people and a desire awakened to emulate their example.
Unfortunately the "path of duty" is not often at present "the way of glory,"—but it is a part of religion that the glory of an approving conscience and of the final smile of God should rank far above fleeting earthly fame. The Boy Scouts, in their excellent creed, embody this idea, and so do the Camp-Fire Girls. Both set up the right ideals, which is the main object of true education.
"The Country Contributor" to theLadies' Home Journal, feels that our nation is suffering from a falling-away in this respect, and that our ideals and our strength to follow them are going to be improved by the great war.
"We shall have heroes to mourn for," she says, "not moral degenerates, not financial failures, not self-satisfied goodcitizens, dying of slow spiritual decay. Maybe our men will wake up. Perhaps new-born men may flash upon our vision as Custer did at the Grand Review.
"During that three-days' march of the Grand Review, somebody flung a wreath of flowers from a window, and it dropped upon the beautiful head of General Custer, with his leonine mane of yellow hair falling on his shoulders. His horse was frightened and ran; so Custer rode, a wild, beautiful figure of young Victory, down the length of Pennsylvania Avenue. Or like Phil Kearney at Seven Pines, with his one arm still left and the reins in his teeth."
Alfred Noyes, in theBookman, has pointed out to a scoffing man who has belittled our heroes and our history, andsays, "There are no ghosts in America," the fact that we have abundant romance and heroism within our annals, and names some of the men and events which stand for them, adding: